


Prompt No.25: Strangers

by Anythingtoasted



Series: 100Fics [20]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:27:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: No. 25: Strangers</p><p>Characters: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black</p><p>Pairing: Remus/Sirius</p><p>Era: Post-PoA</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt No.25: Strangers

_"I held your name inside my mouth through all the days out wandering." - Sheargold, "Animal Life"_

XxX

This office always surprised him with its familiarity. He’d been here many times as a boy, after all; standing in the corner trying to look blameless as Sirius and James made lengthy speeches on why this particular misdeed was actually the fault of _wizarding society_ and they weren’t to be blamed, no sir. Peter mostly sat beside them, white and trembling, begging them not to tell his mother.

He skirted the desk slowly, wandering, not sure if Dumbledore was there; since leaving the hospital he’d not been fully briefed on what had happened the night before; he knew only that Sirius was gone, and oddly, so too was a hippogriff. He also knew, luckily, that there would be no new werewolves roaming the Hogwarts grounds this year. He edged towards the desk with a strange curiosity, taken by the little gold trinkets that clicked and whirred on Dumbledore’s desk. That was the mystery of the man; these things could just as easily be Dark Wizard detectors as they could be toys. He reached for one, not really thinking, wanting to feel its smooth gold body vibrate against his hand, when he heard the headmaster’s voice from the balcony above him; the great red shape of Fawkes flew in and gave Remus a wide berth as it came to rest on the perch beside Dumbledore’s desk. Remus didn’t take it personally; most animals weren’t fond of him.

“Mr. Lupin. I’ve been expecting a visit from you, but I didn’t think it would be so early. Are you well?”

“Recovering.” Remus said shortly, determined to say his piece and little more. Dumbledore stepped off the staircase and crossed the room to his desk. He gestured for Remus to sit, and the werewolf shook his head. “I’ll not be long.”

“I’d rather you sat.”

He did, reluctantly, not wanting to appear excessively wary; conversations with Dumbledore always made him feel as if he were being manipulated, and he could never work out exactly why. Even in getting the professorship, something he had _wanted,_ there had still been the nagging sense that he was somehow playing into a grander scheme. “You know why I’m here.” More statement than question. The headmaster _always_ knew why he was there.

“You are, I expect, correct.” Dumbledore sat at his desk and leaned his elbows on the table, threading his long fingers together and resting his chin on his hands. He looked at Remus tiredly. “So let me tell you now that it cannot be done.”

Remus, slightly thrown but not altogether surprised, stumbled on his words. “Why not?”

“Mr. Black has gone into hiding. If you are asking me to let him stay somewhere permanent, it cannot be done.” He said evenly, in the face of Remus’ already emerging frustration.

“So what if he’s in hiding? I’m not saying bring him _out,_ I live in _Yorkshire._ ”

“He must keep moving.”

Remus frowned. “Albus, I realise you want to be careful, but he’s – he’s not well. He needs to be with someone who knows him. Who can care for him.”

Dumbledore smiled in his typically infuriating, patronising way. “Forgive me if I suspect your motivation is not quite so …altruistic as all that.”

Remus faltered again; one could never talk to Dumbledore without knowing he was always, always one step ahead. It was, to put it mildly, _infuriating._ “You don’t understand. It’s been _fourteen years._ ” He tried not to undermine his argument by becoming emotional; staring Dumbledore down seemed the only option, but the headmaster was barely participating, looking at him sadly, eyebrows furrowed over his glasses.

“What I understand, Remus, is that what you are proposing is not only selfish, but not _rational.”_ He sighed. “Matters of the heart rarely are, I know, but… there it is.”

“I’ll be secret-keeper.” He must have sounded mad, but Dumbledore’s placid, pitying expression remained unchanged.

“Ridiculous.” The headmaster said quickly. “He’s a fugitive. The first person they’ll look to is you.”

“They’ve questioned me enough to know I don’t have any answers.”

“That might not be enough for them this time. The ministry’s changed, Remus, and it’s not worth risking you.”

Heat boiled up his neck and onto his face. “Because I’m a valuable contact.” He spat, desperate, and Dumbledore deflated visibly; his expression grew even  more strangely sad. He shook his head.

“Because you are a good and loyal man, Mr. Lupin, and your kind are few and far between.” His eye contact did not waver; Remus lost his fire, the anger trailing out of him to be replaced by shame and disappointment. He folded his hands in his lap and looked at them.

“Will he be safe?” He said quietly, defeated.

“If he is clever. And you and I both know that he is.”

“Will I-“ He couldn’t bear to ask. He stared more fiercely at his clasped hands. “I’m not a professor anymore, I suppose?”

Dumbledore sighed. “Remus, if you want me to fight for your right to teach here, I, and a good deal of my staff, will fight for you. But it will not be easy, and I doubt very much it will be successful.”

Remus looked up at him, finally able, and smiled ruefully. “I appreciate that. I think, though, that I’ve done my fair share of fighting. If I have a choice, I’d like to avoid it.” He pushed himself out of the chair, stood, and leaned over the desk to shake Dumbledore’s hand. “Thankyou, Albus. For everything.”

Dumbledore took the hand, but his expression was solemn. “Keep in mind that things are changing. We may need you to fight, yet.”

Remus nodded. He turned to leave, got to the staircase and turned back. Dumbledore looked at him, unsurprised. “I wish I could be as grave as you about this, Albus, but I can’t. I know things are changing; but maybe it’s for the better.” He chuckled at Dumbledore’s patronising, close-lipped smile, realising how foolish he must  have sounded. “Sirius is innocent.” He said, and for the first time, felt the weight of those words in full. “He didn’t betray us, and it can’t be long before they catch Peter, I – we’ve waited – _he’s_ waited _fourteen years_. We can hang on for a few more, if needs be.” Dumbledore smiled, but his brow creased; it was as if he were listening to a small, naïve child. Remus was only slightly disheartened. “Thank you again, Albus. If I hadn’t been here, I might never have known.”

The sad, ironic smile remained as Dumbledore nodded silently at his words. Remus faithfully ignored it; he bowed out and went down the stairs to leave the office. He kept his own words in his head; it _wasn’t_ youthful optimism, whatever Dumbledore thought; perhaps it was partially that, but Albus didn’t, _couldn’t_ understand. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Remus was not alone in the world. He smiled to himself as he pushed the heavy door that led out of Dumbledore’s office. He could wait.

XxX

The owl came a mere half an hour before he arrived, in Dumbledore’s spidery, staccato script. _‘He will be with you soon, I expect.’_ That was all. No explanation, no more information; after almost a year Remus had started to give up hope, confident that he would never see Sirius again, before this note on a Saturday night arrived unheralded and his heart took up permanent residence in his throat.

When the knock came at the door he was hard pressed to pretend he hadn’t been sitting with one eye on the door since the note hit his kitchen table. He rose slowly, nervous as hell and knowing that it would be awkward, halting; fourteen years. Fourteen years in which Remus had been sad and bitter and Sirius had gone through god knows what and who could know, for sure, what the end product was? He unlocked the deadbolt with fumbling, useless hands and when he finally got to open it, there he was. Remus was surprised, though he had expected no-one else.

“Remus.” His face was unkempt, a messy beard on his chin, feet of hair down his back, more dog than man at this point. But his eyes creased in much the same way; the mouth that held the smile was the same as it had been all those years ago. Remus stepped back to let him in and they awkwardly evaded one another as Sirius walked in and Remus shut the door behind him. Sirius, seeming even smaller now without the benefit of weight, shoved his hands in the pockets of what looked like an incredibly old, filthy black trench coat. He looked like a sailor who returns home when everyone has given him up for dead; drenched wet from the rain outside, in that ragged coat, heavy muggle boots, the rattiest pair of trousers and the most worn jumper that Remus had ever seen. Nonetheless, something inside him gently snapped; it was like something, somewhere had been created all those years ago and now, seeing him again, it had dissolved and warm, thick liquid was pooling in Remus’ feet. He steadied himself.

“Jesus. Look at you.” He shook his head in wonder; Sirius looked bemused. “Give me your coat, I’ll – do _something_ with it.” Sirius laughed and shrugged out of it, handing him the sodden thing.

“Burn it, throw it out, use it as curtains; I don’t care.”

“I’ll forego the curtains, if you don’t mind.” He hung it by the door. It was easy and yet something stood between them; the years, or simply the difference in both of them. He never thought of himself as having changed, but he supposed the years couldn’t have been kind; when he and Sirius had last met, he’d been barely an adult. Now, he thought wryly, they were _middle aged._ He’d thought the day would never come. This was strange, too; distance.

He remembered holding Sirius in the shack; but that was different. Sirius had gripped him, and he had understood; it wasn’t a confession, but rather, _I know you._ Not a remnant of the past but a broken man clinging to whatever wreckage he recognised. They had been moving much in the same way. Now, when danger was no longer present, when neither was surprised to see the other, history lay between them, begging to be picked-over and revised. Remus turned to him. “Are you hungry?”

“Very.”

“Right, I’ll –“ he gestured, smiling apologetically, to the kitchen. Sirius nodded.

“I remember.” He said quietly, and Remus nodded at him, letting Sirius trail after him as he went to the kitchen and picked through the cupboards for food. “This is your mum’s old place.” He spoke again in that same quiet, hesitant voice. Remus turned from the cupboard he had his head in.

“Yeah. You came in…fifth year?”

“The summer. With James.” He looked sorry for having said the name, but Remus did not react. “Is your mum-“ He started, then quietened. Remus turned from the cupboard again.

“Two years ago, now. She left me this old place.”

Sirius looked morose. “I’m sorry, mate.”

“It’s alright. She was old. She had time to say goodbye.” He laughed gently. “She always asked after you, towards the end.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I was never really in the mood to say much, though.”

“I don’t blame you.” Sirius sat at the kitchen table and folded his hands. He looked around the kitchen interestedly. “I haven’t been here in so long.”

His voice was even, barely above a whisper, as if he was in awe of Remus’ tiny, ramshackle cottage in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside. Remus remembered that summer in fifth year like it happened just days ago; the three of them wandering boredly over fields during the day, amusing themselves by letting Padfoot worry the sheep (Remus tried, but there was really no stopping them); the two wizard-raised boys eating his mother’s cooking at night and being almost unable to speak, for wonder. He remembered laughing at Sirius, who astounded his mother by saying he’d never had a proper Sunday lunch before, let alone Yorkshire puddings. They’d been happy and bright, even when the rain didn’t stop for a week; even when Remus had a bad transformation and had lain in bed for days, his two friends had snuck into his room to disturb his sleep and had told him jokes, and shown him the morose, jealous letters Peter had sent them every other minute from Cancun. He remembered only vaguely feeling something, even then; Sirius would turn suddenly from sitting on the floor in the living room watching something stupid on telly with Remus’ mum and dad, and Remus would be almost physically struck by his strange, arrogant beauty. Of course, at fifteen, this means nothing; his stomach could have jumped out of him and danced the macarena, and he never would have realised it meant something. It took years for Sirius to actually start pursuing him in earnest, and months for Remus to even consider reciprocating. It had been a strange dance for them both. He felt strangely sad, now, that James had never known. Remus laughed at his own uselessness.

“I don’t really have any food, as such.”

“Drink?”

He chuckled softly. “Maybe. I’ll have a gander.”

“A _gander_.” Sirius was making fun; this was preferable. He’d been lost, for a moment, in what had gone before, forgetting that reality sat at his very kitchen table, quiet and cold and hungry.

“Yes. One of those.” He said into the fridge as Sirius laughed gently from the table. “I don’t really drink much. It’s just me. Don’t want to get into bad habits.”

“Oh, well, if you don’t have anything-“ Shy and retiring, again. Years ago, they might’ve good-naturedly fought about it. Remus found, in the very back of the fridge, a bottle of tesco rosé which could have been there since the beginning of time, for all he knew; he certainly hadn’t bought it. He pulled it out, anyway, grasping it by the neck; the bottle was freezing cold.

“If we get poisoned, I apologise.”

“It’ll probably be worth it.”

Remus busied himself in the cupboards, finding it hard _not_ to smile. He eventually found glasses, planted one in front of Sirius and one down for himself, and twisted the cork out of the bottle with a corkscrew he’d found in the corner, alongside the glasses. None of this was his; he wondered vaguely what kind of habits his mother had developed in her final years. “So.” He said, sitting down. Sirius took the bottle from him and poured himself a heavy glug of wine.

“Yes.”

“How did you get here?”

“Walked.”

Remus laughed as if he was joking, then caught his expression. “You’re not s- you’re joking.”

Sirius shrugged, taking the glass in hand; Remus noticed the dirt under his nails, the general messiness of him. The story became suddenly much more believable. “Didn’t really have a choice. Can’t travel as me, anymore.” Remus looked at him, studying his face; the Sirius he knew; the boy who’d faithfully conditioned his leather jacket every month, even in the face of Remus’ derision; who’d taken more care of his hair than most of the girls in their year, when they were at school. Who’d (albeit reluctantly) let Remus take the motorbike out on the occasional weekend, and had sat clutching him underneath his armpits, hissing ‘Remus Lupin, you are a _dead man_ ’ in his ear when Remus, laughing, almost careened them into a telegraph pole – he was inside this face but elsewhere, behind the ragged man in front of him who’d _had to survive._ Remus felt a rush of pity and wonder crash over him; he picked up his glass of wine, instead.  “How long did it take you?”

“Couple of weeks, give or take. I’m not sure.”

“Jesus _Christ._ Are you alright?”

Sirius nodded. “I’m fine. Could do with a wash,” he laughed, “but otherwise I’m alright.” He gestured with the glass. “Thanks for this-“ he searched for a name and then stopped. “Can I call you Moony? Do we still do that?”

“If you like.” Remus said easily, shrugging. “I hadn’t heard that name for a long time before Harry came to me with that damned map – what on earth were we _doing,_ making things like that? It’s a wonder none of us were expelled.”

“You remembered how it works, though?”

“Of course. I’m thirty four, not _senile._ ”

Sirius frowned. He put the wine down. “How have you been?” He asked earnestly, one hand on the table, the other on his knee. Remus avoided his eyes.

“Fine. Moons have been hard, but when aren’t they?” He avoided all the phrases crowding themselves in his head; _I missed you. I worried for you. What are we, now?_ Sirius reached a hand across the table and touched his, but only briefly; he drew it back again, just as quickly.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It was definitely no fault of yours.”

Sirius drew breath. “I’ve been asking Dumbledore where you were since that night in the Shack.”

Remus looked at him. “I went to see him the morning after, to ask if you could stay.”

“We’re a couple of fools.” Sirius said quietly, embarrassed. “Fourteen fucking years and we still act like bloody teenagers.” He yawned widely, and Remus felt panic grasp him around the middle.

“You’ve been travelling for – oh, my god. Please go to sleep.”

Sirius looked at him blearily, his eyes watering from yawning. “I’m fine. We have to catch up.”

“You’ll still be here in the morning. No, please. Dumbledore didn’t give me much warning so I haven’t a bed, but you can take mine, I’ll take the sofa. No arguments.” He said, as Sirius opened his mouth to protest. “Let me do this.”

Sirius, who knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t give in, blinked slowly and nodded, yawning again. “Okay.” He started to get up. “Thankyou, Moons.” Remus got up to show him to the room but Sirius waved him off. “I remember. It’s alright.” He stood looking at Remus in the kitchen, swaying where he stood from tiredness (and perhaps, a little bit from the wine on an empty stomach). He stepped close to Remus and wrapped both of his arms around his neck; like before, but not like he was drowning; more like he’d been rescued. Remus could hardly take credit; Sirius had done all the rescuing himself; but he held him anyway, arms at his bony middle, and laughed. Sirius stepped away after perhaps a moment too long, and pressed a hand to his face, shook his head, and walked up the stairs. Remus watched him go, his long dark hair down his back, his clothes threadbare and (as he now knew) smelling of dog, and rain, and travel. He touched the rim of the glass Sirius had been drinking from, and smiled to himself.

He’d always known that this, here – this was worth fighting for. This was worth wars, and years, and youth. This was what he had left, and he was _determined_ to keep it.


End file.
